How It Unfolds

“How It Unfolds” by James S.A. Corey gravitated towards my radar from my bookish friend, Rosh. As a fan of The Expanse series (well, the first four at least), I knew I had to check this quick short out. Deep down, the book is about hope, fate, destiny, and the permutations that may happen with the choices we make.

A team of interplanetary engineers is taking trip(s) to different galaxies looking for inhabitable plants for the future of mankind. The catch? The team does these ‘folding' excursions over different lifetimes. Stay with me here. It sounds sort of complex, but the rules are fairly easy to follow. The characters are rich; there is a bit of exploration, a tiny bit of humor, and a whole lot of heart.

|| “ We can live a billion different ways from here, but there's only one path behind us. That was never going to change.” ||

It is refreshing to get so much story in something so short, and I had exploration vibes similar to those of Christopher Columbus. Replace the sailing with teleportation, a spice trade with hydroponics, and a light sprinkling of new world/old world concepts.

If you are in the mood for a fun little sci-fi story, this would fit nicely.

**Side note: I just have to comment on the food in the book and the conundrum I pondered after I finished it: “the food was always the same: dense cakes with all the nutrients, fiber, and microbiota to sustain life in a puck the size of a pack of cards.” I was trying to decide if this would be better than the ‘protein-rich porridge' from the Matrix.

I loved it, even though the use of scientific vocabulary made the story quite hard to follow and understand at times for me. I would have liked more of it, still it's a solid short story with a satisfying and lovely ending.

Good

Wait this was good. Confusing but in a good way. But feels incomplete so a full length novel would be fun.

Kind of a love story with a sci-fi twist.

Short, but sweet. Definitely worth a read/listen if you have Kindle Unlimited.

The authors' writing style definitely comes through and is enjoyable, for those of you who have read the Expanse series.

Gah! This was so interesting! Personally, I love to read alternative creation myths. If Prometheus (2012) was interesting to you I think you would like this piece of speculative fiction from the James S.A. Corey writing team.

The Novella follows Roy, he's a member of a planet colonization team. Well that's not entirely accurate. It's actually a copy of Roy that's a member of this team, all the members of this team are copies that are “beamed” out and “unfolded” on their target planets. His mission is to start the colonization process, and once they are able- to beam out a new copy to a new planet. Rinse and repeat.

What really makes this book cool is the non-traditional narrative. It quickly becomes unclear which Roy the narrative is following, with each new passage written from the perspective of a different Roy who made different choices in his life. I'm a fan of stories like this, and it's to the credit of Novellas as a medium, I don't think this would be a fun full-length book to read, but at just 37 attention-grabbing pages, this was short and sweet.

I mainly chose to read this because I wanted to check out a sample of James S.A. Corey's writing, so I was surprised to learn that this is part of the new The Far Reaches collection of novellas. These are a ton of cool stories by some of the best SF authors doing it right now, and they're in nice little non-intimidating chunks. I will definitely be checking out the other entries!

This story steers me to consider that there may be no scenario in which a particular choice works out for me. There are times that I need to let something be in the past as what it was. Good until it wasn't. A point that deserves deliberate thought. 

I find the possible endless echoes this story projects gives me the feeling of swimming in dark water where the bottom has never been found.

This is a very thought provoking short story and packs a lot into such a short time. I cannot wait to read more by this duo.